


Spike Curve

by phenanthrene_blue



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Awkward Sexual Situations, Blow Jobs, Character Study, Chicago White Sox, Conflicting Feelings, Incorrect use of the bullpen, M/M, Pitcher/Catcher dynamics, Unofficial team practices, Veterans and Rookies, anxiety relief, humor and smut, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-29 06:06:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21134774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phenanthrene_blue/pseuds/phenanthrene_blue
Summary: He knows Dylan fairly well at this point, and he surelylikesDylan enough, but on any given day, James can vacillate drastically between wanting to give Dylan the biggest hug he can and wanting to throttle him half to death because the kid is justso neurotic about damn near everything.It goes beyond passion and desire to win and desire to impress; no, that’s all common shit for rookies. But Christ, Dylan’s like…like someone cloned Lucas, shot him up with amphetamines, and gave him a case of perpetual puppy-eyes.





	Spike Curve

Dylan’s first start with the Chicago club, against Detroit, actually isn’t half-bad. He has Major League debut nerves going on for sure - as is pretty typical for a very young pitcher - and he’s wild as hell in the first inning. He walks three, gives up two runs, and even hits Jeimer Candelario with a poorly-placed inside fastball.

Before the White Sox come up to bat in the bottom of the frame, Lucas bumps his shoulder against James’ and mumbles _They’re not biting. He’s tipping. He’s definitely tipping, and anyone on second can see it. _As James goes out to the on-deck circle, Rick and Coop corner Dylan in the dugout. Dylan looks like a deer staring down an oncoming train. _Rookies_, James thinks, and rolls his eyes. _They just had to give me a real live one here._

Dylan makes it through five innings anyway, and gets the win for his efforts.

Afterward, James takes him to Starbucks, both of them still in uniform, because Dylan apparently runs on nothing but caffeine, and, well, what else is a catcher supposed to do for Baby’s First Win between games of a doubleheader? Also, Yolmer wants his caramel somethingorother, Jose wants his usual over-sweetened latte, Yoan needs a Frappuccino, half the bullpen wants muffins, and Lucas drinks straight espresso because Lucas is _crazy_ \- and Dylan offers to carry everything back to the park because that’s what over-eager rookies do.

Dylan’s second start, against Kansas City…doesn’t go as well. It’s a lemon of a game. Every team has them occasionally, but the White Sox seem to have more than most this year. Dylan gets shelled, the bats go into hibernation, the relievers go into Tryout Mode - and the Sox lose eleven-to-zilch.

James would like to take Dylan’s third start and flush it down the memory hole. They go to Tampa. The Rays are a damn good team, and the kid’s _clearly _still nervous about being in the Show. Dylan is all over the place, and James is windmilling around behind the plate trying to corral all of the errant sliders and curveballs that don’t break the way they’re supposed to. His velocity is inconsistent. His release points are a _disaster_. It’s like some fucking 1980’s aerobics routine just attempting to catch him.

Then Dylan throws a get-me-over, center-cut fastball, or, _something,_ to Travis d’Arnaud, which he hits about eight-hundred feet, and of course, d’Arnaud hits it about eight-hundred feet with Wendle, Garcia, and Diaz occupying first, second, and third bases, respectively. James wanted it _down_. Dylan left it _up_, and…surprise! 4-0 Tampa!

_Well, shit._ James tilts up his mask and rubs his eyes tiredly. _Shit._

He’s seen plenty of sub-optimal pitching performances, but he feels _bad_ for Dylan. Especially when James sees him spacing out on the bench, staring bug-eyed and straight ahead as the sixth inning begins. Dylan’s got the look of a pitcher who _knows_ that he’s utterly fouled things up - and his forays into figuring out _how_ and _why_ and aren’t terribly successful. 

And man, James has got a _lot_ of work to do here.

***

It’s an off-day, and it’s Wednesday, which means it’s Dylan’s regularly-scheduled throwing day.

They’re out in the bullpen adjacent to the field, at around six in the evening on an overcast day, and as far as bullpen sessions are concerned, this one _really_ isn’t working out. Dylan’s fastball looks good - quite good, in fact; he’s even got a little rising action on it - but everything else in Dylan’s repertoire leaves something to be desired.

“You’re _aiming_ the ball again.”

“No I’m not.” Dylan calls back, innocently.

“Yes, you are.” James tells him, standing up. “We talked about this. When you’re learning a changeup, you can’t _aim _it, ‘cause then it might end up looking more like your fastball.”

Dylan, shuffling atop the bullpen mound, nods in response.

“You make a mistake and leave a change-fastball hybrid…thing sitting dead center at eighty-five, and you and I both know what’s gonna happen to it. Right?”

“What happened to it in Tampa, basically.”

“So let’s do that again. Just, go by feel this time.” James says, returning to a crouch. “Don’t aim it. Don’t even _focus_ too much on where it’s supposed to go right now. Just pitch.”

“Okay.” Dylan exhales hard.

It’s certainly an actual changeup, but it’s high and fast and somehow arcing straight for James’ head, and he doesn’t even try to catch or block it, just ducks out of the way and hears it rattle into the base of the fence.

“…Sorry.” Dylan visibly recoils a little bit. “Aw, _jeez,_ that was no good.”

“That wasn’t a bad pitch. We just gotta get it a bit lower_._”

“I mean, assuming that I was_ trying _to take your head off,” Dylan says, some frustration becoming evident in his voice. “Then sure, it was a good pitch. Whatever.”

“Whatever? It wasn’t_ that_ bad. C’mon. I could’ve framed it as a strike.”

“Yeah.” Dylan shrugs. “Whatever.”

_Rookies. _James thinks again. _The kid’s_ _twenty-three, self-deprecating, and stubborn as a goddamned mule_.

James figures he might as well do something productive, and walks up to the top of the mound. “Okay. Hm. Lemme see your grip, Dyl.”

Dylan holds out his right arm, and forms his hand into his changeup grip around the baseball. James, who has caught enough pitchers and seen enough wannabe changeup artists wth flawed throwing mechanics, studies Dylan’s grip for a moment. Finally, he eases Dylan’s pointer and middle fingers apart, and rotates the ball so that Dylan can feel the seams more easily under his fingertips.

“Try that.” James says quietly. He feels down the back of Dylan’s hand, checks the posture of Dylan’s wrist, and notices, under his thumb, that Dylan’s pulse is throbbing wildly. _James doesn’t know how to feel about it._

“Anxious.” James pulls his hand away slowly. “Can tell. Your heart rate is _ridiculous_. You’re floundering around up there because you’re just _anxious._”

“No. I mean, yeah, it’s just…” Dylan sighs. His voice is high, uneasy, his slight Georgia drawl becoming pronounced.

“Dude, you’re hyper-focusing.” James interrupts. “It’s okay. It’s just _me_. You can seriously chill out.”

“I’m just…a-a little tense today. Tired, maybe.” Dylan says quietly. “Doesn’t feel like my best stuff right now, and I…”

_And the kid’s always a raging perfectionist, on top of it! They’re _practicing_, for Pete’s sake, not playing for the American League Pennant._

Dylan trails off and abruptly starts talking again. “Well, I still gotta throw you a few spike curves. Make sure I’m not tipping ‘em again, but…I…can we do this a little later?” 

“Later?”

“Yeah. I need to take a break for a bit. Gotta…uh, get my feel back, you know?”

“Just _breathe_. C’mon, we can do it right now real quick.”

“No. _Not_ now.”

“The heck are you so anxious about, Dylan?” James asks.

“Jimmy. _Seriously._” Dylan says, rather warningly. “We’ll do it _later_. I’ll text you or-or something.”

“Okay.” James backs down, hands raised in front of him. Even though it’s unlikely, the last thing James wants is some petty confrontation with a teammate who’s a high-strung, overstimulated mess. Who also happens to be throwing hard (and inaccurately!) enough to give him a concussion. _Dylan’s going to _text_ him when _he_ wants to resume? What kind of practice is this, anyway?_

James waves Dylan off politely. “Okay. Okay. Later, then. Sometime. Go and, uh, get some supper, or something.”

_James isn’t sure what to do. And Jesus, he hates being called “Jimmy”._

***

There’s a little Asian fusion place, two Red Line stops north from 35th and Shields, where James likes to go eat by himself after particularly annoying bullpens.

And he believes today qualified.

He tries not to think until he’s in his favorite booth by the window, with his no-doubt-unapproved-by-the-team-dietitian-sized bowl of pork and noodles in front of him, watching the rain start to weep down on the city’s South side.

James has caught a _lot_ of _bad_ bullpen sessions in his career. Despaigne was cover-your-eyes awful, but he pitched like that all the time. Minaya seems permanently spooked by the fact that Guaranteed Rate Field has an upper deck - and he’s been up from the minors for three years. Reynaldo López has a lot of potential, but he loses focus and seems to end up on another planet whenever he’s got a baseball in his hand. And being in Detroit meant often catching a comical parade of retreads and has-beens, but the Tigers weren’t so much a baseball team as they were a metaphysical crisis of some kind that_ happened to play baseball_.

And then there’s Dylan Cease, who James doesn’t quite know how to approach.

He knows Dylan fairly well at this point, and he surely _likes_ Dylan enough, but on any given day, James can vacillate drastically between wanting to give Dylan the biggest hug he can and wanting to throttle him half to death because the kid is just _so neurotic about damn near everything_. It goes beyond passion and desire to win and desire to impress; no, that’s all common shit for rookies. But Christ, Dylan’s like…like someone cloned Lucas, shot him up with amphetamines, and gave him a case of perpetual puppy-eyes.

James actually chuckles to himself at that thought, and sips the green tea that came free with his pork lo mein.

In a way, he can at least _understand_ it. Dylan’s a highly-rated, _extremely_ talented prospect, forced into being mature beyond his years. They’re a year-and-a-half away, at most, from doing something other than being a punching bag for the Twins and Indians, a proposition which partially depends on Dylan _not fucking up_, and that’s a lot of weight to bear for someone so young. _He’s so young,_ James thinks.

James doesn’t have any of that pressure. James is twenty-nine. He’s six years older than Dylan, which might as well be sixty in baseball years. He’s been around the proverbial block a few times, and has played on nearly every permutation of every crappy team imaginable. It’s been five years of pervasive crappiness. James doesn’t mind. They wind him up, they let him go: he just does his job. He helps however he can. _Anything _for his team, and all that. He takes any emotions he has regarding the situation at hand and simply boxes them up for examination later. It’s a strong suit of his.

But there’s Dylan Cease, who keeps kicking those boxes open for him at times like _this._

James flags down his server and orders himself another cup of tea. It was _hot _outside. He’s parched, and he’s lost track of how long he’s been sitting here. 

_God_, James thinks. Dylan needs to _relax_. Stop watching_ every_ second of _every_ video of _every_ start in the clubhouse conference room until Coop finally boots him out at midnight. Take a night off. See a movie or something. Get some _sleep_. _Does Dylan even know what “sleep” is? _James muses, lightheartedly, whether there’s anything he could to do to help here, to at least knock Dylan’s anxiety level down to where James isn’t in danger of, yaknow, getting _decapitated_ the next time the kid decides to work on his changeup. 

He twirls some noodles around his chopsticks and mulls that thought around a little more. Catchers are, by trade, fixers, and that’s probably why half of them become managers in the end. Every phone call or late-night text, every study session, every argument with an umpire over whether something’s a ball or not, every time he’s got to knock in a guy from third to back a run that one of his guys gives up - fuck, every time someone on the team throws a conniption over _something_, James is there, trying to resolve it. By nature, he wants to resolve this, and God _damn_, he’s got to do _something_ before Dylan runs himself into the ground and takes half the team with him. Dylan’s a friend. Dylan’s also driving him nuts.

So he wonders where to start.

Like all fixers, his methods are infinite and flexible. And suddenly, James finds himself going into a memory he hadn’t touched in a while, and…_sometimes, well…_he thinks, _maybe too flexible_.

_Nick Castellanos was his best friend in Detroit. It was 2016, and Nick - yes, hard-swinging Nick The Stick - was stuck in the middle of an unbelievable and torturous oh-for-some-big-scary-number streak at the plate. He was splintering bats over his knees and everything, and _God_, and Nick wouldn’t shut up about it. It was like having a loud, angry, buzzing hornet trapped in the clubhouse for days._

_And nothing worked, so obviously, James had to take some drastic measures, which, for some reason, culminated in him giving Nick a fast, sloppy blowjob in the team equipment closet. Neither of them were really into other guys, but honestly, what’s wrong with a little friendly help for a teammate? Nick was certainly receptive enough, for what it was worth. And _anything_, James had thought, just to get Nick’s brain to go _somewhere else_ that wasn’t the three weak-ass pop-flies he had had made outs on that afternoon._

_Afterwards, James had stood up, taken a swig from Nick’s gatorade bottle, and asked, bluntly, “Are we cool?”_

_Nick had gone “Yeah.” They both went home, Nick’s hitless streak eventually ended, and they never talked about it again. All cool._

That was three years ago, though, and some things are better off being swallowed (pun not intended) by the flow of time. James laughs out loud again. _No. He is _definitely_ not doing that with Dylan. Polite, upstanding, church-going James McCann would absolutely _not _solve the problem of a way-too-tightly-wound rookie pitcher in _that_ manner._

Would he?

James sniffles, turns up his eyes in protest, and sinks his forehead down into his palm. His elbow bumps his now-empty noodle bowl, causing an unbalanced chopstick to tip out and click onto the floor.

The screen of James’ phone, set down next to him on the table, flashes with a text, jarring him from _wherever _he was wandering. _Thankfully so, perhaps._

_Okay so how bout now?_

Well, it’s Dylan, a fact that, perhaps unexpectedly, tries to steer his brain back toward where it _was_.

_What’s up? _James texts back, immediately pushing the thought aside.

_Curveballs. Remember? Ready now!_

_Now?_ James thinks? _Ready to go back to the bullpen_ now, _at quarter-to-bloody-nine? _They have an early-afternoon game tomorrow against Miami, and everyone should be home clearing their heads and getting some rest and other concepts that Dylan doesn’t seem to grasp, and it’s pissing rain outside and it’ll probably do so until at least midnight, and really, trust Dylan to propose something so silly.

_It’s late. Raining, haha. _James replies. _We’ll get to it before your next start, don’t worry._

_We’ll use the practice bullpen. 20 min enough time for you?_

The kid’s got such a one-track mind! _Fine._ James thinks. _He really wants to throw curveballs, I’ll catch a couple curveballs_. James fishes in his wallet for a credit card, and feels an unusual, involuntary shudder come from somewhere deep his chest.

_That’s fine. _He texts.

***

The “unsanctioned, late-night bullpen sesh” is _mostly _a myth. Mostly. _Oh well._ James thinks while he puts on his chest protector. _He was probably due to have one eventually._

They’re down in the indoor practice bullpen, around the corner from the clubhouse gym and the batting cages. Despite James’ suggestion, Dylan had not taken a break to eat, but had instead taken a shower and then evidently watched himself throwing spike curves on his tablet for two hours straight.

“…So looking at the Detroit start and then the Tampa start, I _think_ this tipping stuff’s got something to do with the positioning of my elbow. I’ll talk to Coop about this,” Dylan prattles on from the mound, like a scientist who’s just had a “Eureka!”-moment, “But see, when my elbow’s further out from my head, like this,”- he demonstrates - “anyone behind me might see what I’m going to throw, and sync it up with your signs. _Sort_ of like what was going on with Lucas.”

“Makes sense.” James says. “But throw me a couple easy fastballs first. I’ll look at your elbow here.”

It’s all procedural: Dylan throws strikes; James catches them without much effort. James doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary. He knows he would, too, because he realizes, within a couple minutes, that he’s watching Dylan rather intently.

Nothing wrong with that. Catchers check out their pitchers all the time, and Dylan’s got a _presence_. Sure, it’s not quite Iván’s quiet authority, or that intimidating, get-in-the-box-and-pray gravitas that Lucas has. But even now, pitching in just a T-shirt and workout shorts over his compression leggings, Dylan’s got that whole steely-eyed, ace-in-waiting-thing going on. He’s tall and strong and super-intense, and, James adds as a quick afterthought, _very easy on the eyes, too._

Not that’s an especially sinful thing to admit, but James didn’t anticipate that he’d start to feel all weird and sweaty when he did so.

_Okay. Emotions. In the box. Now. _James warns himself. “All right, now the curveball.” James orders.

Dylan’s got a real good curve, a nasty snap-hook that drops like a bowling ball shoved off a parking deck. James forces himself to focus, and he thinks, after a couple pitches, that he can _kind of_ see what Dylan is talking about. Like, the angle of his arm is just a sliver different between his fastball and curveball. It’s subtle, but likely correctable.

_And Dylan does this-this thing where he sticks his tongue out and bites it, like it’s a just natural part of his delivery, and when James looks up, he catches the end of it, watches Dylan’s nice pink tongue dragging over his lower lip, and-_

“Yeah.” James calls out, immediately. “I see you.”

_Oh, he sure does, and James worries, for a moment, that that might _not_ be correctable, because sometimes when you see these things, you can’t _un-see _them._

_What the hell is going on?_

So James, almost like he’s trying to physically _will _all this out of his head, walks up and takes the ball from Dylan, and Dylan leads him through a dry-run of the motions for his fastball, and then his curveball, and then his fastball again. James watches from the side, and from behind, and finally says “Okay, stop just like that. It’s _right _there.”

_Whoa, Dylan’s got a nice ass, too._

James cups his hand around Dylan’s right elbow, and pushes it downward and back.

“Um, my arm doesn’t really go like that.” Dylan turns and smiles. _Oh. Oh my._ _He’s got perfect, dark-brown doe-eyes and long eyelashes and a gorgeous smile and fuck,_ fuck,_ this kid is mind-numbingly cute. _

_He’s not un-seeing anything now._

_“’_Cause,” James presses his hand flat against Dylan’s shoulder blade, and digs the heel of his palm into the tight muscle there. “Cause you’re tense here,”-he rubs his spread hand lightly down Dylan’s back, balls up a fist, and digs it in just above Dylan’s waist-“and _here_. You are gonna _give yourself a frickin’ cramp_ if you don’t calm down soon.”

_James’ heart is beating so fast, leaping up into this throat, that he swears he might choke on it._

“Thanks, man.” Dylan says. “Really, I’ll get it, just gotta find a way to unwind a bit more.”

James’ hand is now resting on Dylan’s hip, and _there it is_, he’s thinking about what inadvertently came to mind during dinner. Shit, oh, _shit_, he’s got something mis-filed in his brain, and now that thought’s just _stuck_ there, like a pebble in his sandal that he can’t kick out. _C’mon. Kick it out._ _Think about the home run you’re probably gonna hit tomorrow, your mom, the pretty girl that was sitting behind you at the restaurant_,_ just, don’t _say_ anything, James. Don’t open your stupid mouth, don’t_—

“I mean, I could try and help.” James blurts out.

“Huh?” Dylan asks.

“We could maybe go get a drink or something, or, uh, _well_, I don’t really drink, but, uh…” James tries - and fails - to inhale the rest of his sentence. “Or I could blow you.”

***

_Wow._

_Wow, he just fucking said that, all matter-of-fact like!_

“Sure.” Dylan’s eyes widen in surprise, but he thinks for a minute, and he grins back. “But I don’t drink either. Too many calories. But the second part—”

“Oh, uh, yeah. Okay. I was just joking about that.”

_Yeah. That’ll _really_ work. Keep digging your grave, James!_

“Well, I wasn’t. So go for it, if you want.” Dylan won’t stop with the smiling. “In case you actually _weren’t_ joking.” He’s simpering and honest and honey-sweet and _James is still rather shocked that Dylan didn’t immediately turn around and walk out._

_Of course he wasn’t joking. _And now God, Dylan’s blatantly _asking for it_, and James has lost all control over his actions whatsoever and can’t wrest it back, because all he can do is point and growl, “_Then_ _get up against the wall, doll-face_.” Now he doesn’t even know how to talk like a rational human being either!

Dylan obeys, climbing over the railing, and he backs into the wall, and then James is _there_, pushing his body up against Dylan’s, his hand pausing at the front of Dylan’s shorts.

“If you want me to stop, just say so.”

“You’re good, _ah!_-“ Dylan gasps as James rubs him quickly through the cloth. It certainly doesn’t take very long to get him keyed up, and James encouragingly grinds his hand into the hard ridge of Dylan’s dick. James is staring, right into Dylan’s eyes, right at the light flush painting his cheeks, and he asks him, “…dude, when’s the last time you got off?”

“It’s, uh…it’s been a while.” Dylan struggles with the last word as James grabs him through his shorts.

_So psyched out that he can’t even enjoy himself. Fuck, the kid’s like a_ monk, _if monks occasionally tipped their curveballs._

And then James is on his knees, faster than he thought the Dylan would let him get there, and he’s pulling down Dylan’s shorts and leggings and special athletic performance briefs. Dylan’s got a great dick - no surprise he’d be easy on the eyes there too; it’s not exaggerated, porn-star huge, but he’s certainly on the bigger side of average.

It _has_ been three years, and James realizes quickly that he doesn’t remember _exactly what to do._ So he starts slowly, swiping his tongue along the underside of Dylan’s cock and sucking gently on the head. He’s trying to keep his teeth out of the way, playing with Dylan’s balls; varying his pace a little. Waiting for Dylan to tell him, in some form, to _keep going. He’s a catcher. He’s got good knees. He can wait as long as it takes._

Dylan does tell him, a few seconds later, by settling his hand on the back of James’ neck, and James one-ups him and takes Dylan into his mouth further. Dylan responds by pulling James’ hair just hard enough to hurt. _Ow. Little brat! _He didn’t even know his hair was long enough _to_ pull.

It’s different than James remembers.

_Nick _was different. Nick was loud and vociferous and told him precisely what he wanted; there wasn’t much left up to James’ interpretation. But Dylan’s a puzzle to be mastered; he’s quiet, save the occasional moan or outburst of breath, and James can’t especially pick up on any major subvocal clues here. No, all James can do is keep at it, licking and licking like Dylan’s some succulent dessert he’s desperate to get to the center of, licking until the tip of his dick gets all pink and Dylan goes _uhhhhhnn_ and pushes forward a little.

_Damn,_ it’s hot, it’s blazingly, _wickedly_ hot, and James is overcome by the nagging desire to make Dylan absolutely _scream_ \- _hey, you can’t have a proper bullpen without some screaming once and a while! _\- and James grabs Dylan around the ass, pulls him toward him, and swallows him down as far as he can.

“Fucking…shit, your fucking mouth, Jimmy. _God_.” Yeah, _that _gets Dylan talking.

_Huh. _James acknowledges, _he sure loves being called “Jimmy” now!_

The kid’s trying, trying _so_ hard to maintain some semblance of self-control and not full-on fuck James’ face, but James has him trapped against the wall, bobbing his head up and down on Dylan’s dick. He’s beet-red and his hair’s less-than-tidy and he’s got spit and pre-come all over his mouth and tears pearling up in his eyes, but he’s taking it surprisingly well. _He’s in control here._

Dylan, by contrast, is a shaking, begging wreck, acting like he’s never gotten head before, and who knows - maybe he _hasn’t_, and that thought just urges James to go faster, harder.

James figures, with all his built-up tension, that Dylan doesn’t have the stamina to hold out much longer, and he’s right.

“James—” Dylan groans out, like his voice has been snapped right off, and he taps James on the top of his head. James doesn’t care, he’ll swallow, he’s_ gone_, _history_, kaput! - A nuclear detonation of _It Was Not Like This in Detroit _and _Lord Have Mercy_! Anything for his team-anything, right now, for Dylan, for this hot, dumb, heralded, anally-retentive rookie that he just can’t get enough of.

Dylan comes so hard his knees buckle. James eases him down into a sitting position, strokes him though the aftershocks; watches his face go all sated and pensive - and actually _relaxed._

“Mmmmm.” Dylan says after a short stint of just breathing, and pulls his pants back up. “_God_, I needed that. Thanks.”

James wipes his mouth, sits down next to him against the wall, and says nothing.

“I…crap.” Dylan laughs, and says, “All this anxiety stuff…I’m…really not a finished product, am I?” like he’s lapsing into some post-orgasm philosophical episode about pitching.

“You’re not a _product_ at all, Dyl.” James squeezes his shoulder.

More just-breathing. Dylan gives him a coy little grin.

“Do you need any help?” Dylan shrugs. “I could, uh, try?” He looks _downward._

“I’m good.” James says.

Dylan’s smiling too-broad, like he’s trying to keep a giggle stuffed in his face, prompting James to ask “What’s the joke?”

“_Doll-face?_” Dylan quips, “You couldn’t do better than that?”

_This goddamn impossible kid._

***

James is a liar, and a terrible one at that.

James was so hard he could barely stand up, let alone exchange pleasantries, extract himself from the bullpen, and find his way out to his truck. Let alone not rear-end someone on the Dan Ryan, or not drive through his garage door. He could’ve easily _alleviated this problem_, but no, he had to be all cold-shouldered and stoic about it.

He’s in the shower. He’s been blasting himself with hot water for forty-five minutes, damn near scalding his hide off, his head tipped back into the spray and his hand around his roaringly hard cock. He’s so sensitive, but he’s also so completely_ locked up_ that he can’t even jerk himself off. _Really, _trust Dylan to cause such a pathetic affliction.

_Hey, c’mon, it’s just like it was with Nick,_ he had tried to tell himself, _you’ll probably forget about it in a week_. _You’re not really that into guys, remember?_

But that weak hack at - what was it? reassurance? - didn’t even dent the surface. _This_…is going to present a challenge. This is _not _how he pictured this night going when he got up this morning.

_This is _bad.

But that’s not working. Trying to put _these_ emotions into a box is like letting a toddler wrap a present. The box ends up half-ripped and there’s twelve feet of tape stuck everywhere it shouldn’t go; it’s just an epic failure to execute. He is not “good.” He isn’t anything even classically approximating “good.” And yes, he _could _have used the _help._

He’s stroking himself faster, maybe edging a little.

It’s not hard for James to imagine it. He can picture just how it could’ve happened. Dylan on his knees, looking up at him with those big almost-black eyes, with his hair all mussed up. Dylan probably could’ve gotten him off with his pitching hand. Good hands. Strong grip, and all. Fuck, his lips had looked amazingly soft, too, and he’d put a hefty bet on the kid giving an outstanding blowjob. When he thinks about it, yes, he’d totally like to feel Dylan’s short beard scratching at his upper thighs. God, Dylan could’ve probably just _kissed _him and he would’ve gone off like a firework left in a hot car.

James has known everything and seen everything, but this, thoughts like _this_ are something turbulent and unknown that’s way over his head. _Was he helping Dylan, or doing it because _he_ wanted it?_

_And did it matter?_

He’s _close._

_Christ._ James wants to take Dylan’s clothes off; wants to pet and bite and mark all that cream-pale skin; he would love to get Dylan on top of him. James wants,_ wants_—

This _is_ bad, but this is also_ incredible_, and James bites his lip and licks reflexively at the corner of his mouth. He can still _taste_ Dylan, and that’s the_ hottest_ trigger point he could possibly have, and he curses loudly and shoots off all over his fingers. “Oh _Lord”_, James sobs out, “_Lord_.” He bangs his fist into the wet tile. “_Dylan_.” He pants.

_He’s screwed,_ he thinks, as he comes down over the next few minutes._ Oh, he’s so_ _gloriously_, _royally_ _screwed_, he’s —

— rinsing his hand, jumping out of the shower, throwing a towel around his waist. He’s in his bedroom and flailing around in his pocket for his phone.

And he’s texting Dylan.

_Wanna come over and see a movie?_

Man, James has got a _lot_ of work to do here.

_Yeah, sure. :) _Dylan answers.

…But maybe not as much as he thinks.

**Author's Note:**

> Had a lot of White Sox games on at my house this past season, which allowed me to notice that James McCann is a Very Helpful Teammate and Dylan Cease is definitely the cutest rookie to get called up in baseball this year. (Seriously. Google him). 
> 
> (Or: my fiancé is obsessed with the White Sox, and if he knew I wrote this, he'd probably laugh for twelve minutes, or maybe twelve days). 
> 
> Set the last week of July 2019. Of course it's fictional. No beta (Although bestie littleblacksubmarines listened very patiently as I rambled on about this for about a week straight, I thought it was awkward to ask a die-hard Indians fan to beta Division Rival Fic.)


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